I woke up quite early and realised there was lights outside ...... only took a minute for me to be fully awake once my brain worked out that we were coming into New York City. I jumped up and got out on the balcony just in time to see Lady Liberty all lit up looking gorgeous. Of course there was no going back to sleep so I popped a teabag into the coffee pot and started that brewing while I hopped in the shower. Poor Rodd, he has no hope of sleeping when I'm excited and ready to move! He stayed in bed while I fussed about organising the last few things and while I went up to the buffet to get us some breakfast. 

By the time I got back with our plates of toast, scrambled eggs, tomato, potato (and bacon for Rodd) the ship was getting ready to back into the dock in Manhattan. We sat on our balcony eating breakfast, enjoying the last hour on board, this was a little hard for me because as soon as we started eating we found ourselves in the middle of a scene from "The Birds".... seagulls were squawking and flying right up to the balcony. Rodd made it worse by throwing scraps of bread at them with me pleading him to stop encouraging them! It was all too much for me so I went inside to eat in peace! 

Not long after breakfast we heard the call for self disembarkation guests to make their way to Deck 7 where the gangway was ready for us .... it's a bit sad getting off a cruise ship especially when we've been in the sunny warm Caribbean and here we were back in New York City, freezing again, we could see piles of ice still on the tops of the building next to the Port and were reminded that just 10 days ago they had had that terrible blizzard.

We had no problem getting off and through customs/immigration and before we knew it we were out on the crazy streets of NYC. The whole set up is a bit silly because hundreds of people are pouring out of the Port and have to cross the street to get a taxi. There must easily have been 100 people in the taxi line and you know we're not good with lines so I suggested we just walk up a couple of blocks and hail a cab on the street. Good move!! We walked up one block, past piles of dirty snow, around the corner and voila!! a cab just happened to pull up to let someone out so we jumped in and were on our way to La Guardia airport for our 2 pm flight! 

We tried to check our bags in as soon as we got there but unfortunately it was still only about 9.30 so more than 4 hours before the flight and the automatic check in machine just kept telling us to go away. A very official looking staff member came and asked what the problem was, I explained about being too early and he just sort of grunted and told us to do it again. Both Rodd and I thought "what a nice man, he's going to do it manually for us" but he went through the whole process again on the machine and then said " you're too early, go away and come back in half an hour"... really Einstein??!! Just another example of the difficulty we have making ourselves understood even though we all speak the same language! 

Oh well.... so off we went downstairs to the food hall to sit for half an hour. Neither of us were hungry cos we had eaten fairly well on the ship before disembarking so we just chatted and people watched! We noticed quite a few soliders all dressed with lots of weapons and they looked like they were on duty, they were standing around with their backs to walls just watching everyone... worried me a bit because we weren't airside yet so no-one sitting around had been through security yet!! I don't know about Rodd but I was feeling a little seedy even though we'd had an early night. I haven't mentioned this but we have both had a throat tickle that sometimes leads to coughing fits so travelling is not really the ideal activity at the moment! I had bought a bag of cough drops though just in case we felt a fit coming on in the plane, I hate coughing or blowing my nose on a plane, I feel like everyone will think I'm contaminating the air!

Finally time to drop bags which we did easily following the prompts on the screen... no wonder there's so many unemployed, everywhere you go everything is becoming automated!! We were a little concerned because as we walked away we looked back and saw a bloke came from the front of the counter and take Rodds bag off, wheeling it off and around a corner.... I did think that was the last we'd see of it but tried to tell myself the man did look like an employee. I guess I was wary as we'd met two couples on the ship that were travelling together and when they'd landed at JFK they discovered one bag from each couple was missing, on looking at the security video they saw a bloke walk into the terminal, up to the carousel and just pick up their bags and walk out again!! Bloody cheeky!

I breezed through security and Rodd is having a pretty good run here as every airport has the new x-ray scanners instead of the walk through ones which he always sets off with his titanium hip. Here though they wanted to look at his bag after it went through the scanner because he had a large candle in a glass jar (that we'd got at the cruise critic gift exchange) and because it is a large mass they had to examine it. The bloke swabbed it and tested it for explosives... three times... then scanned Rodd and patted him down. Finally we got the all clear but it was interesting talking to the officer while he did it all as he was really nice and explained exactly what he was doing and looking for. 

Now we've only got about 3 hours before our flight!! 

 Our flight between New York City and Memphis requires a stopover in Chicago so we had another 3 hours to ponder the universe once we got there. Our bags thankfully had been checked through all the way so at least we didn't have to go through all that and security as well. 

Chicago O'Hare airport is quite simply ENORMOUS!! From the concourse we arrived at we had to walk forever from the gate and then down escalators and along a really long walkway under the airfield itself to another concourse building! 3 hours was easy to pass here though cos there's lots of shops, restaurants and bars. Rodd (as he does) started talking to some flight attendants commenting on how big this airport is and one of them said it's the 4th largest (by passenger volume) in the world, surprisingly Atlanta Georgia is the busiest... that stat really amazed me! 3 hours went fast enough, we did end up finding a bar and I had a glass of wine, Rodd only had a lemonade though and the two drinks cost $15 US (!!), talk about airport $$$$

Chicago to Memphis was easy enough and then we collected our bags.... yay Rodds bag made it!! We jumped into a taxi and sped at a crazy rate toward downtown Memphis. Rodd was watching the instrument panel and he said every warning light possible was on and flashing... he was expecting the car to either breakdown or break apart at any moment but we did get there safely in what I'm sure had to be record time.

Fairly straight forward check in and up to our room to drop bags and head out to find some food. It must have been around 10pm by now and the street looked deserted but we started walking and within a few blocks found a corner store. There was a couple of blokes stumbling around and making quite a bit of noise on these deserted streets and I must admit I was a little wary and planning my escape route!! We bought a few things, drinks included and headed back to eat and collapse!